He looks and acts exactly like my AP Spanish teacher down to the specific solid but identifably American accent

edit: when I searched YouTube for a clip of ¡Jeb! speaking Spanish I came across a Jimmy Kimmel clip from 2021 titled “President George W. Bush Plays ‘Bushism Or Not?’”…the existence of such a segment is enough of a cognitohazard that I can’t conscionably link it. You already know exactly what the comments look like.

The main stories usually involve more research, so I imagine they’re prepared well in advance. But it’ll probably get covered in one of the shorter segments preceding the main story that pad out the running time (those don’t make it on the official YouTube but I think they’re more topical).

Reminded me of “Yesterday” by the Beatles because of the quotidian lyrics and the iambic meter:

I took the train to pride

I saw a film to-day, oh boy

root suit

Is that Australian for birthday suit

What in tarnation

Sidenote complain about the world: Sandbox games combined with my autistic obsessive compulsive need for completionism lead to me playing them with very frusterating habits lmao.

I feel this so hard. I really enjoyed Subnautica, but I think I spent more than half of my playtime farming a giant locker full of every single material because I thought I might need them later, but it turns out that you barely need anything to complete the game and there isn’t an endgame to speak of. Whoops. It could have been justified if I were into basebuilding, I guess, but that’s not my thing.

Another issue I run into is overoptimization–just figuring out the cheese strat or collecting so much that the game becomes trivial. I think that’s why I enjoy Resident Evil so much, since survival horror games are designed for you to be a compulsive loot goblin and therefore don’t fall apart even when you collect every last bit of ammo.

Speaking of Resident Evil: with Resident Evil: Village, I didn’t get true 100% because I don’t like the arcade submode The Mercenaries, but I had tons of fun doing a bunch of NG+ runs to max out all the weapons and get all the unlockable collectibles through the main campaign. I find the process of fighting through the first run with the intense experience of not knowing anything and then continuously getting more experienced and more powerful until you’re sprinting through and headshotting enemies with your infinite ammo revolver on the highest difficulty by run six.

Others have mentioned SM64 and Super Mario Galaxy, and I’d also add Super Mario Wonder. The final secret level (unlocked after you complete everything else in the game) is a bit frustrating due to the sparse checkpoints, and there’s one or two treasure hunt levels where I had to look up a location or two, but I appreciate that otherwise I could 100% the game just using my platform skill and natural loot goblin instincts. I did my whole run through on Ryujinx and it ran perfectly, too!

One that I wouldn’t recommend for this is Control, even though I enjoyed the game and it’s got a very cool atmosphere. They have this very unfortunate system where they offer four randomly generated generic missions (Kill X of Y enemy [in Z location] or get X kills with Y weapon/ability) and each mission awards a random selection from a tier and an equippable skill/weapon enhancement. You can see both the exact mission as well as the tier and category of reward before accepting a mission (of which you can have three active) and there’s no penalty for dropping a mission. This led me to sitting at the assignment board endlessly regenerating missions until I would get a full loadout of missions with the highest tier rewards and reasonably achievable objectives, after which I’d go do those missions, rinse, and repeat. I would not be surprised if I spent twice as much time doing this than actually playing the game normally, and I sank a good 60+ hours into the game. Oh, the worst part is that the rewards aren’t unique and there’s unspecified variability within tiers (so a tier VI shotgun enhancement could be like +35% damage, but then you get a +36% damage enhancement and are like, “wait, how high does it go?”). And also, you can only see the broadest category type, so the odds are high that you’ll get an enhancement that you don’t even want. It’s funny–I suspect the devs made the system flexible to avoid forcing people to do missions they don’t want to, but it created a perfect trap for people like me.

All I’ll say is that RE6 is definitely a game for one who’s already neck deep in the series as opposed to a relative newcomer who would get a better first impression with RE5 if they’re looking for raw action.

I’m 100% with you–I would never want RE6 to be anyone’s introduction to the series. My personal progression was RE4→RE5→RE6→RE8→RE7→RE2R→RE3R→(you are now here), so just release order starting with RE4 except RE7 and RE8 were transposed. Oh, and I also played the Oculus Quest 2 exclusive RE4VR, which is definitely not tuned difficulty-wise for the huge increase in mobility and precision afforded by VR but is an absolute blast (nothing quite like knifing a downed Ganado with one hand while fending off a horde with the pistol in your other hand). It’s also really cool to be able to just walk around the areas you know from RE4–I mean, it’s no Half-Life: Alyx, but even with the relatively primitive graphics of the RE4HD you still get a pretty great sense of presence. Really wish I had a PS5 and PSVR2 so I could experience RE8 and RE4R in VR, but I can’t really justify the eye-watering cost for just those two games. Maybe we’ll get it on PCVR when the PS6 rolls around…

Funny thing is that I actually prefer RE8 to 4 (though I played it first). I would consider close to perfect if it were a good bit longer and didn’t kill off the entire villager cast in the first 30 minutes.

RE8 is some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a game, and I could hardly put it down until I’d gotten all the achievements. I don’t think it’s the kind of game you can really obsess over in the same way you can with RE4, but it executes on it’s premise incredibly well. The only word of caution I’d have to anyone playing it for the first time is that there’s a long scripted encounter near the beginning of the game that (unless they’ve since fixed it) is absolutely brutal if you start out on Hardcore because it’s not clear what the game wants you to do and there are some invisible triggers you need to hit in order to progress. I think it took me an hour on my first attempt, and I know I wasn’t alone there. With that notable exception, the game plays like a dream.

As for RE3R, I know a lot of people who played the original were disappointed due to cut content and Nemesis not being a true pursuer (apparently he was more like what Mr. X is in RE2R?). I didn’t have that frame of reference, but I definitely preferred Mr. X as a constant presence in RE2R and I like the extensive backtracking present in RE2R compared to the linearity of RE3R. More of a case of really loving RE2R than not enjoying RE3R.

My petty complaint about RE2R and RE3R that could be easily addressed is not having infinite ammo unlocks for ALL weapons like RE5/6/8. Personally, I don’t find the Infinite Rocket Launcher that fun, the weak unlimited handgun/automatic rifles are pretty lame (I just used the unlockable but limited Samurai Edge in RE2R and ignored the rifle), and while the RAI-DEN in RE3R at least offers a different playstyle, what I really want is to rampage through the game with unlimited ammo for my fully upgraded normal weapons. I’d even accept what you get in RE4, where the unlocks are different (but not completely absurd) weapons with unlimited options: the Handcannon and the Chicago Typewriter. I just want to blow away every single zombie with a magnum–is that so much to ask?

Also I have really got to check those CGI movies out–from what I’ve heard, they seem like they’d be right up my alley.

My grandpa was more coherent in his 90s after a traumatic brain injury

Also Scarborough’s wife lmao

I’d recommend the line-up on sale right now on Steam except the one that came after RE5 and before RE7

As the resident RE6 apologist, I firmly believe that it is easily worth $5 for a somewhat janky and extremely campy action co-op experience if you have a buddy to play it with. And yeah, there’s no “survival” aspect–this is definitely the game where they turned the dial too far to the “action” side, after which they swung towards “survival” back past RE4 for RE7 (excellent if that’s to your taste–incredible atmosphere), and finally landed back in the crowd-pleasing sweet spot for RE8 (which I absolutely adore and beat like half a dozen times).

RE2R and OG RE4 I could easily recommend to anyone; perhaps not the latter if you’re completely allergic to tank controls, but the game is tuned for that playstyle and it makes the encounters very intense. I also enjoyed RE3R, although it’s not quite as good as RE2R and a bit on the short side. And I hear RE4R is great, but I haven’t yet played it myself–would definitely recommend giving the OG a shot first, since the new REngine games have a different tempo and feel to them and the original holds up completely. I’d also recommend installing the RE4 HD texture mod if anyone goes for OG RE4–truly an incredible labor of love by a pair of dedicated fans.

I think you meant to post this in a thread about MGS

Yes, sorry, wasn’t clear with the way I worded that! I guess it’s a little strange to say he vindicated himself–regardless it must feel good to finally be able to say it with his chest after holding his tongue for all this time.

“Stupid fucking mistakes, man.”

“Nothing illegal happened, no pictures were shared, no crimes were committed, I never even met the individual,” Beahm claimed. “I went through a lengthy arbitration regarding a civil dispute with Twitch and that case was resolved by a settlement…But trust me when I say this…to all my haters that live and breath [sic] social media with zero real life experience, I don’t give a fuck about you. They want me to disappear… yeah fucking right.”

The words of someone who is definitely contrite.

Also,

Meanwhile, the cause for the ban remained a mystery, prompting years of innuendo, conspiracy theories and questions about why neither Twitch nor gaming journalists had been able to reveal the nature of Beahm’s violation. (Full disclosure: the primary author of this article, Rod Breslau, first learned the reason for Beahm’s ban from credible sources in June 2020, but chose not to report on it then due to the extreme sensitivity of the topic.)

holy shit, Slasher finally vindicated after all these years. That tweet became a major meme on Twitch, with some people assuming that Dr. Disrespect did something truly horrible (ding ding ding!) but plenty of others assuming he was full of shit and just grandstanding.

1. RE: ASMR, what most people think of as ASMR is only a small subset of what’s out there. I also find those intentional trigger videos (where people are just tapping on or brushing various objects) uninteresting to actively offputting. My favorite types are unintentional ASMR (particularly people talking about technical things) as well as personal attention roleplay (not the relationship roleplay stuff, which squicks me out, but things like medical exams or customer service). Whether unintentional or not, verisimilitude is the key-- that’s part of why disconnected triggers don’t do it for me, but also I tend to be triggered by voices more than anything else

Here’s a classic video which ticks all the boxes for me (unintentional, accented English, tasteful amount of tapping and rustling, and amusingly technical given the subject): table tennis racket inspection. Another unintentional classic which launched a million roleplay ASMRs is this cranial nerve examination; a big part of it is the soft speaking and high gain on the mic as well as the personal attention. Actually, I probably should have lead with this, but the modern ASMR phenomenon was born out of people discussing these various unintentional videos and then people deciding to have a go at making intentional videos that have similar effects.

Not everyone experiences the pleasant tingles, which is something to keep in mind. Personally, I experience misophonia to the point of feeling pain in my ear when people blow onto the microphone, so any videos involving that are right out, and other people will have similar non-negotioables. It’s totally fine not to enjoy ASMR regardless of the reason, but I just wanted to share that there’s more variety out there than you might think!

With the rest, I’m basically right there with you.

2. Never made an Instagram because I have absolutely no interest in posting or looking at people’s photos, although 15 year old me would have been into it so I can’t blame the kids for that.

3. What are the kids watching, out of curiosity? If it’s the latest battle shonen stuff (e.g. Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer) then yeah, I have no interest because I don’t enjoy that genre in general, but I wonder if there’s any other series where we might have some overlap.

4. YouTube pushing vertical streams has been driving me nuts. I don’t mind watching a YouTube short here and there, but it’s just not a good format for 99% of what I want to watch even if I’m watching on my phone.

Walmart has fallen

Incredibly, this is real. Boggles the mind.

At one point as a child I had so many stuffed animals that they kept falling out of bed while I was asleep, but rather than leave someone out I solved this by putting them in a comically large mesh bag (thing was bigger than my body).

I think the only time I ever set foot in a Burger King was to get one of these. Sadly I think mine is long gone along with some other Pokémon ephemera (including my beloved Pokédex), but at least I still have all my cards!

Yeah, I’m gay